


The Beneficent Kind Of Love Magic

by hummingbirds2



Series: Project Team Beta Writing Challenge 2013 [3]
Category: Southern Vampire Mysteries - Charlaine Harris
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-30
Updated: 2013-01-30
Packaged: 2017-11-27 13:19:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/662445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hummingbirds2/pseuds/hummingbirds2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“The night swelled with the beneficent kind of love-magic that sweeps couples away.”  Sookie is entranced, along with Eric, on the night of her twenty-eighth birthday.  Set in Deadlocked.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Beneficent Kind Of Love Magic

**Author's Note:**

> PTB Writing Challenge 2013  
> Challenge Number/Title: 3/Word Play  
> Date Posted: 30 01 13  
> Fandom: Southern Vampire Mysteries  
> Rating: R  
> Genre: Canon (Deadlocked)  
> Content Descriptors: Romance  
> Character Pairing: Sookie/Eric  
> Beta’d By: All About Eric (as always, thanks so much. x)

On the night of my twenty-eighth birthday, Eric and I sat on the back steps of my house, side by side.

I said, “For weeks, it seems like we haven’t really been a couple, though you still tell everyone I’m your wife. Lately, that’s just meant we have sex. I know it’s a tradition that guys don’t like relationship talks. I don’t think I do, either. But we have to have one.”

Eric said, “Let’s go inside.”

“No. That might end up with us in bed.” I looked up at the beautiful starlit sky.

And the night swelled with magic, the beneficent kind of love-magic that sweeps couples away.

“If it’s talk you’re wanting, I know a few words we can play with,” Eric said. “Porch swing?”

“Eric!”

“Kitchen table?”

“So we’ve gone inside now, have we?”

“Rug in front of the fire?”

“It’s not cold, Eric.”

“Shower?”

I should have seen that one _coming_. Ha Ha! My silence only encouraged Eric.

“I love you,” he said.

In my mind, I went straight to my happy place where I kept good memories of love and peace … and showering. It was like a balm to my unhappiness. The shower - the first place I’d let Eric love me. And vice versa. Okay, it had been sex, not exactly love then, but sex with feelings. And now…

I said, “I love you too, Eric.” The security light glinted off his blond hair, the same colour as mine. Our blue eyes met, his intent with desire and heat. A little shock ran through my body. I wanted to touch him, to have him touch me. And then I was unhappy that we weren’t touching.

 _Play now; words later_ , the night magic said to me. _It is your birthday, after all._

“You remember how it went, Eric?” I asked.

“The shower? Our first time?” he clarified.

I nodded. “Both.” I let my arm slide against his. Just touching. The hairs on my arm quivered to attention.

“My memories have returned, but who knows how exact they are? Are your memories of that shower … good?”

“Oh yes, I have very good memories of the occasion.” I pressed my arm against his. Cool, velvety but firm flesh met my warmth. Just the way I liked it.

“Where do we start? Inside?” Eric asked.

“Okay, inside,” I agreed. After all, having Eric _inside_ was my favourite place for him to be. Silly, I thought, but it was a relief to have made the decision to give myself this birthday treat. Who knew what tomorrow might bring?

He took my hand in his large one.

I looked down at our joined hands. Love and pain went hand in hand too, I suddenly realised. Love could be gone in an instant through death, betrayal, distance, magic spells… That had been my experience. But at this moment, under the stars, our love wasn’t over, not yet.

Eric’s hand gently squeezed mine. I looked up into his eyes and let myself feel my love for him, bright and strong in my heart. “We started with me in the shower,” I said. Perfect, I thought. I wanted to wash away the heat of the day and let the heat of the night take me. “A minute later, you came in after me, naked.”

* * *

I was wet and waiting. The warm shower-spray bathed my hair and body. My heart beat up-tempo. Eric seemed to be taking his time.

I groped for the soap.

Right on cue, Eric pulled back the curtain. I gasped, surprised that he’d managed to surprise me, even though I’d been expecting him. He stepped in to join me saying, “I’ll do that for you.” He remembered his opening lines exactly.

I stayed still as Eric took the soap from my hands.

His eyebrows rose in question.

“Perfect entrance,” I said. And I was amazed at how ready I was to jump him. Eric was in the mood too; his fangs were peeking out and his other extendable body-part was already up and about. Eric looked the same as he did back then; I had a few more scars to show for time passing.

“Tell me if I get this wrong or if you would like to change the script.” Eric soaped my body, carefully washing my arms and sides, moving his long fingers across my chest and belly, but never touching my breasts. And boy, did those puppies want to be touched. They were used to his devoted attention.

“You didn’t touch my breasts back then either,” I confirmed, as they quivered.

“No,” Eric said, softly. “You’d had my blood. I could feel your embarrassment and indecision about the situation. But I could feel your desire, too. I was waiting for you to decide what you wanted to happen, before I got too personal.” As if getting into the shower, naked and uninvited, hadn‘t been personal enough!

I smiled, and said, “Mmmm”, when Eric’s lathered fingers slipped low down, skimming across my hips. “I remember you were washing me thoroughly and I was awash with conflicting emotions. I didn’t realise you could feel those so clearly, even then.”

Eric shrugged. “I can’t feel you now. You’ll have to tell me how you’re feeling,” he said. “Turn around, lover.” The word ‘lover’ was like a warm caress to my heart.

I turned under the spray. “My libido is hopping up and down. It was back then too,” I told him.

“I hoped you could feel my own _desire_ poking into your back, so you knew how I felt.”

“Desire! Is that what you’re calling it?” Right on cue, I felt Eric’s gracious plenty connect with my spine. “You were lucky not to scare me off with that thing, Eric. I could feel your ‘desire’, and you weren’t even standing that close to me.”

Eric chuckled. “Then it’s lucky for me you’re a brave woman, Sookie Stackhouse.”

We were silent, cocooned in the steam and spray. Eric’s strong and clever fingers massaged my shoulders now, as they had then. So far his memories were pretty darn exact. Soon I had the most relaxed and cleanest set of shoulder blades in Louisiana, and then Eric shampooed my hair. Supple fingers lathered and stroked and rinsed. Every hair follicle sighed in bliss. So did I.

“Now I should ask, ‘why are you trembling’? But you are not,” Eric informed me.

“No. I’m not that inexperienced girl any more. I know what I want to be doing, and that is touching you.” I reached for the soap in the niche and lathered my fingers. I remembered where I had touched Eric first, intimately.

I spun around, and gently grasped Eric’s ‘desire’. It was his turn to sigh. “In my head, I called this your Mr Happy.” I folded Mr Happy up against his stomach, so I could reach around to my favourite part of Eric’s anatomy - his butt. I stroked and kneaded the smooth half-orbs with my slippery fingers.

Eric moved his legs apart, obligingly. “Mr Happy? I prefer the later name, the one you invented after you’d been made happy several times.”

“A gracious plenty? It does sound classier than Mr Happy. And I think it’s better than say … a pleasing sufficiency or … an obliging bounty, although it is all those things.” Eric made a happy noise, as I dug my fingers in and squeezed. Then I moved my hands and began to work on his chest. “Back then, I was wondering how to tell you to be careful with me … or with your burgeoning manhood or your throbbing length. But we worked it out.” I stopped the word play to close my lips around his nipple and suck.

“Bite a little, “Eric said. His hands pressed against the back of my head.

I used my teeth. His hands moved restlessly over my skin … until he decided to reciprocate.

He closed his mouth over my nipple, as his hand glided between my legs. Eric’s long fingers had me doing some moves of my own.

And then just like before, the next thing I knew, the water was off and Eric was drying me, and I was drying him. Then we kissed over and over. It wasn’t like the first time; it was better - fuelled by need and longing and love … and an intimate knowledge of each other’s bodies.

“The bed?” Eric asked, hopefully. And this time I didn’t worry about ending up in bed with Eric.

Breathlessly, I nodded. He scooped me up and we landed in a tangle on my bed. We untangled and tangled again many times as the night progressed. Eric’s restored memories were entirely accurate, but he was creative too. He turned my body to Jell-O and added multiple orgasms to my jar. I could still flick his Bic. It was all yikes and yahoo and yum. But the best parts were the whispered compliments and endearments, the laughter and how we held each other. I was loved, and so was Eric. It really was the best.

As we lay snuggling, warm and cool together in the afterglow, I watched midnight arrive and depart on my bedside clock. My birthday was officially over. Somehow Pam had got her wish for me – no one had hurt me on my birthday!

Then without warning, the beneficent magic was gone, along with the birthday. It was replaced by the kind of magic that rips and tears. The enchantment crept out of the woods and pounced on us. Yesterday was gone. I shivered. So did Eric, and he wasn’t cold.

I sat up and looked at Eric beside me. He was beautiful; golden hair streamed out around his head over the pillow, like a halo. But this was the Eric with political baggage, not amnesiac Eric, and we had a king and queen to deal with. We’d dealt with kings and queens before, once at a blast of a summit and once when I’d found out Eric liked to bowl with a severed head, like it was a cabbage cut fresh from the stalk. Both occasions had been pretty deadly affairs. But I didn’t think Felipe or Freyda intended to solve our problems by getting back into a grave or tomb, finally dead, any time soon.

 _Words now, play’s done_ , said the new night magic. But I didn’t need it to tell me what I had to do.

“We need to talk,” I told Eric, firmly.

“I love you,” he said to me.

“I love you too, Eric. But that’s not what we’re talking about, is it?”

Eric looked away. “I think not,” he said, reluctantly.

I hoped we could come to an understanding.

And not to the pain part of love.

The End

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt is Word Play. Cabbage, summit, king, and tomb had to be used. I have played with a lot of Charlaine Harris’s own words from Deadlocked and Dead to the World.
> 
> Disclaimer: Thank you to Charlaine Harris for letting me play with her wonderful characters from the Southern Vampire Mystery Series and for her memorable words.


End file.
